Research misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.

Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.

Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.

Plagiarism is the appropriation of another persons ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.

Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion.

The Dedicated Juncture Researchers Association is a member of CrossCheck, a multi-publisher initiative to screen published and submitted content for originality. Software may be used to screen images.

If misconduct is suspected, journal editors will act in accordance with the relevant COPE guidelines.

If, after assessing the available evidence, the editor has concerns about a publication, a response will be sought from the authors. If the response is unsatisfactory, the editors will contact the authors head of department or their funding body.

In cases of published plagiarism or dual publication, an announcement will be made in both journals explaining the situation, including retractions if work is proven to be fraudulent. See the COPE guidelines on retraction.

The attempt made by an author to use/pass someones work as his/her own. Self-plagiarism is when author uses some parts of his/her research work without giving exact references. This can lead to the publication of the research work twice in different journals. It generally occurs when large data is being copy pasted from other sources. Such type of manuscripts cannot be considered for publication in IJMNP.

Research work submitted to IJMNP should be apt and should not have been published anywhere else. Authors submitting the paper who have related work consideration or in press elsewhere should upload a clearly marked copy at the time of submission, and draw the editors attention to it in their cover letter.

In case if any part of the article is published previously, it has to be intimated to the IJMNP journal editor by specifying the details in the cover letter.

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. Examples of potential conflicts of interest which should be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the earliest stage possible.

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the obligation of the author to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. If the editor or the publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, the author has to correct it accordingly.

Double or multiple journal submissions are simultaneous submissions of a manuscript to two or more journals at the same time. Authors engage in duplicate publication misconduct for several reasons, such as the need to have many publications to obtain an academic degree, promotions or research grants. We have also observed that the authors may attempt this misconduct due to a need for quicker publication, subsequent omission and loss of control of previous submissions. Some authors withdraw their manuscript from other journals as soon as it is accepted by one journal. We check and suggest that all editors check for duplications whenever a request for withdrawal is received. Manuscripts that are found to have been published elsewhere, or to be under review elsewhere, will incur duplicate submission/publication sanctions.

Falsification is the changing or omission of research results (data) to support claims, hypotheses, other data, etc. This includes manipulating images (e.g. micrographs, gels, radiological images), removing outliers or “inconvenient” results, changing, adding or omitting data points, etc. Submitted manuscripts that are found to have either fabricated or falsified experimental results, including the manipulation of images, will incur data fabrication and falsification sanctions.

Including authors who have not contributed to the research in the manuscript and excluding authors who have contributed to the research is unacceptable author contribution. All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. It is important to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution to the research.

Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles.

Procedures for Responding to Allegations of Misconduct in Research:

In order to maintain confidence in the integrity of the researchers contribution, allegations of misconduct in research must be treated with the utmost seriousness and examined carefully and responsibly.

The Dedicated Juncture Researchers Association journals only consider article submissions which have not been published previously. Redundant publication, duplicate publication and text recycling is where authors reproduce verbatim content from their other publications.

It is important to ensure that research work is only published once. If it is published more than once, the scientific literature can be unjustifiably weighted by the appearance that one study has been replicated. It might also mean that the study is inadvertently entered twice into a meta-analysis, for example, or cause problems in systems which use the number of publications to assess an individuals or an institute’s research output.

Publication of an abstract at a meeting does not preclude later submission of the full article to a Dedicated Juncture Researchers Association journal. Submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification can also be considered.

Duplication of a published article or major overlap/redundancy with another published article is not acceptable. When this is identified, we will follow appropriate COPE guidelines and consider publishing a notice of redundant publication.

Minor overlap or a small amount of redundancy may be unavoidable. This must always be reported transparently and be properly attributed and compliant with copyright requirements.

In research articles, some degree of text recycling in the background/introduction/methods section of an article may be reasonable. However, overlap in the results and conclusions section is unlikely to be acceptable.

In review articles, if text is recycled from an earlier publication without any further novel development of previously published opinions or ideas, or when they are presented as novel without any reference to previous publications, it will not be acceptable.

In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above mentioned policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in JAMES, the following sanctions will be applied:

Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript

Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to IJMNP by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript.

Prohibition against all of the authors from any new submissions to IJMNP either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, as well as in combination with any other authors. This prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 36 months.

Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of any journal published by Dedicated Juncture Researchers Association.

In cases where the violations of the above policies are found to be particularly egregious, the publisher reserves the right to impose additional sanctions beyond those described above.